by Amy Cross
“I can't do it,” Annie blurted out, with her eyes still shut. “Why are you making me?”
“We've been planning for this moment, Annie. We've been working toward it ever since Middleford Cross. You've done so well to get this facility up and running at Eldion House. Between us, we've created the perfect trap, but now we have to be ready to close that trap. If we don't do that, the entity could end up in a human body and then who knows what madness will grip the world? This is the fear that has existed in all of humanity since the days our ancestors wandered the African plains. This is the true horror that mankind has been fearing.”
“I'm just one person,” Annie replied. “I can't even think straight. How can I ever save or help anyone?”
“I admit it seems unlikely, but you're our best bet. I'm in position, Annie. I'm in the radio telescope's system and I'm ready. Now I need you to play your part. I need you to lure the cults out into the open.”
Annie hesitated, before finally opening her tear-filled eyes.
“There,” Nurse Winter's voice purred. “You see? You are strong enough. My sweet little mental patient, you can do this. You're going to leave Eldion House, and you're going to go back to that ramshackle little place that we set up for you using the money I siphoned from an old Middleford Cross account. And then you're going to make some noise, you're going to attract a lot of attention, and the cults will start moving. We have to guide them here, and then you have to come back. Do you understand?”
“I don't know,” Annie whispered.
“Well, you'd better,” Nurse Winter continued. “The fate of the world is resting on your shoulders.”
***
And a little while after that...
“I can do this,” Annie muttered to herself, as she paced back and forth in the cluttered living room. “I have to do it. I can't stop, not now. Not -”
Before she could finish, she turned and looked through toward the hallway. There had been no sound, not in the real world, but in Annie's head there had been a sudden knock.
“Wait,” she murmured, hurrying to the door. “Wait, wait!”
She worked fast to turn the keys and slide the bolts across. She'd sealed herself in the house ever since her arrival the previous day, and she'd used the time to prepare the equipment she'd need. She'd also made a few posts online, making sure to use her real name so that the cults would start to pay attention. Now, as she finally tried to pull the door open, she blinked furiously as she tried to remember what she was supposed to do next.
“Can you give it a kick?” she asked finally.
“Um,” she added.
“With your foot! Kick it with your foot! Harder! And use your foot! It's the bottom where it's stuck!”
Every word she spoke made her believe with more strength that Elly Blackstock was on the door's other side. Since Middleford Cross, she'd begun to rely less and less on the fantasy of Elly's existence, but now she was submerging herself once again into that lie. And as she rattled the door herself, she allowed her last defenses to break down, and all her memories of Eldion House were washed away.
“Annie?” she said finally as the door opened, and as she stepped back. In her mind's eye, she was imagining Elly watching her and speaking those words. “Annie Radford?”
She hurried into the next room, and then she turned and looked over at the empty doorway.
“I got your note,” she imagined Elly saying. “I'm sorry it took me almost a week to get here, but -”
“Finally,” Annie whispered, with tears in her eyes as she once again saw the illusion of Elly Blackstock standing before her. “You're late. We've got work to do.””
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Today
“Hello Annie,” Annie said, her image flickering slightly on the screen. “I'm sure you're surprised to see me up here. I imagine you were expecting somebody else.”
“What are you doing?” Annie stammered, shocked to see her own face in the video. “Why are you trying to trick me like this? I didn't record this video!”
“You probably don't remember any of this,” the video version of herself continued. “You will, in time, but for now your amnesia is perfectly understandable. If you're watching this video, it must be because you've been found in a disorientated state and brought back here to Eldion House. I'm aware that such an eventuality is entirely possible, which is why I'm recording this video in the first place. There isn't much time, and we're too close to stop now.”
“This isn't real,” Annie said, feeling sick to her stomach. “None of this is real.”
“After I've finished recording this video,” the other Annie continued, “I'm going to leave Eldion House and put the last part of the plan into action. I've spent so long trying to figure it out, but now I just have to take a leap of faith and hope that I was right. So I'm going to bring Elly Blackstock back, because I'm going to need her again. A little girl has shown up, her name is Katia and I've been waiting a long time for her to arrive. She's the catalyst for the end of this Annie, and I'm going to make sure that the cults bring her here. So long as she ends up at Eldion House, Kirsten and I will have control over how this plays out.”
“Control over a plan?” Annie whispered, taking a step toward the video, horrified by what she was hearing. “I don't know anything about any plans.”
“Katia will end up here” the other Annie explained. “It doesn't matter how, just so long as she arrives. The cults can be dealt with, they won't pose a real problem. I won't remember my time here, but that's just how it has to be. I'll bring Elly back, and Elly will help me forget.” She paused. “Kirsten says I needed to do this. She says I'm the only one. She's in position now, she's at the radio telescope that the cults will want to use. The cults are just useful idiots, useful for attracting the entity's attention and guiding it here. Soon the entity will arrive, and that's when we can trap it.”
“No,” Annie said, shaking her head in disbelief. “This can't be really happening.”
“I imagine you're panicking by now,” the video version of Annie said. “That's understandable. The good news is that we only have to be strong for a little while longer. Soon we'll be able to end all of this madness once and for all, and the entity will be trapped. We're going to lure it into one of the brains, and then we're going to cut the brain off from the world. The entity will suffer in silence forever, but at least it won't be able to damage the world. You remember this plan now, don't you?”
Annie shook her head.
“It's now or never,” the Annie on the video said, before flinching slightly as if she was in pain. “I have to hurry. Just focus on remembering all of this, and you'll be okay. Schlesinger can explain the rest, provided he hasn't already bolted. You can't entirely trust that man, Annie. Watch your back, and focus on the plan. Nurse Winter will guide you. Everything's laid out perfectly, we've thought of every eventuality. Now it's time to finish this thing.”
The video continued for a moment longer, before cutting off.
“No,” Annie whispered, still unable to believe that any of this could be real. Tears were streaming down her face, and as she ran her fingertips through her hair she felt the edges of metal poking out. “None of this is true. It can't be true!”
She took a step back, but she was already starting to tug at the metal.
“Annie,” Nurse Winter's voice whispered in the back of her mind. “Hurry.”
“No!” she screamed, dropping to her knees and digging her fingernails deeper into her scalp, trying desperately to pull out the metal sheets that she'd once so carefully inserted. “You're not allowed in my head! Get out! Get out right now!”
She began to pull one of the sheets out, sliding it from under her skin. As she did so, the edges began to tear through, but she forced herself to ignore the pain. After a moment she pulled the first sheet entirely clear and tossed it to the ground, and then she immediately started work on the next piece of metal. Blood was already starting to run freely dow
n her hands and onto her wrists, and she was shaking with fear and anger, but she knew she had to get all the metal out as quickly as possible.
“There's no time for this!” Nurse Winter continued. “Annie, I'm fading. The storm's coming.”
Annie worked frantically for the next few minutes, ignoring the pain as she pulled out one metal sheet after another. She didn't even remember how many she'd inserted all those years ago, when she'd first tried to keep the entity from entering her mind, but finally she pulled out the seventh sheet and began searching for any others. Her fingertips pressed against the torn flesh beneath her hair, but now she could tell that she was finished.
Looking down, she saw the twisted, bloodied pieces of metal on the floor.
She slowly lowered her hands and saw that they too were covered in blood. She was trembling all over and – as the silence continued in the room – she listened for any hint that Nurse Winter's voice might return. All she heard was silence, but she was starting to understand that even silence might not be enough, that a voice could burst through at any moment.
“I can never be sure,” she whispered. “I'll never know it's gone. Once you hear it, there's always a chance you can hear it again. The only escape is...”
Her voice trailed off, and then she looked over at the desk.
Slowly, on trembling legs, she stood and stumbled toward the desk. Reaching down, she leaned for a moment against the writing board and listened to her own mind. All she heard were her own thoughts rushing through the void, but she was terrified that at any moment she'd hear some other voice, something that might at first seem indistinguishable from her own, something that might bide its time and grow to become another force entirely.
Something she knew she could never let happen again.
Picking up the letter-opener, Annie stared down at the blade.
For years now, ever since the moment she'd shot her brother, she'd feared this moment. She'd been terrified that eventually suicide would feel like the only way out, that suddenly it'd make sense in her head. Now the moment had arrived, but she knew that she had no other choice. Either the voice would return, or she'd have to live in constant fear. As the video had shown, she'd been taken over by the entity and controlled, used for months – years, even – to do its bidding, ever since that night at the Lakehurst ruins when Nurse Winter had jumped into the abandoned mine.
“I won't live like this,” she whispered, as she set the letter-opener's blade against her left wrist and began to press down. The tip quickly sliced through her skin, sending a first dribble of blood down to her elbow. “You can find someone else to -”
“Annie?”
Startled, she turned and saw that the door to the office was now open, and that standing in the doorway was -
“Katia?” she gasped, before dropping the blade and rushing over. Falling to her knees, she put her hands on the girl's shoulders and began to look for any hint of an injury. “Katia, where have you been? What have they done to you? Have they hurt you?”
Katia shook her head.
“I've been looking everywhere for you!” Annie continued, reaching up and tucking the girl's hair back, before seeing that blood from her own wrist had become smeared on Katia's face.
She quickly used her ragged sleeve to wipe the blood away.
“We're going to get out of here!” she stammered. “Do you understand me? We're going to run and we're going to keep running until we can't run anymore, and then we're going to get help. I'm going to make sure you're safe.”
“What about you?” Katia asked.
“What about me?”
“Won't you be safe too?” This time, Katia paused for a moment. “Do you still talk to yourself?” she asked finally. “Do you still talk to someone invisible called Elly?”
“No,” Annie replied, before looking past Katia and seeing the empty corridor outside, and the top of the staircase. “Is there anyone out there?” she continued. “How did you even find me, anyway?”
“Doctor Schlesinger sent me to see if you're okay.”
Annie turned to her.
“I don't like Doctor Schlesinger,” Katia continued. “I think he wants to do something really bad to me.”
***
With the letter-opener in her right hand, and with her left hand holding Katia a little way back, Annie cautiously stepped into the laboratory and saw that Doctor Schlesinger was alone at one of the benches. He was working on something, and he seemed not to even notice the interruption until finally he turned and looked straight at Annie.
“Ah,” he said flatly, as if he was suddenly very dejected, “I see that you're back. How did the video go? Do you remember everything now?”
“I don't remember any of that,” Annie replied, holding the letter-opener up so that he could see the blade. “I don't remember ever being here before.”
“We don't have time for this!” Nurse Winter's voice hissed in her mind. “Annie, you have to put the plan into action!”
“Your continued amnesia is surprising,” Schlesinger said, “but it's probably due to sheer shock. You will remember, in time.” He paused. “After the events at the Lakehurst ruins, it took about six months for the entity to find you. That's my understanding, at least. Everything moved very quickly after that. You showed up here and established a new branch of the cult. You lured me to work with you. You were very persuasive, actually. We had some long working days right here in this laboratory, Annie.”
She shook her head.
“Oh, we did,” he continued. “Whether you like it or not, that happened. Of course, the entity was controlling you at the time. You admitted as much. You persuaded me to take my work into some very dark directions. On some of those long nights, I wasn't immune to the pleasures of the flesh. We were -”
“Shut up!” Annie snapped.
“You told me this might happen,” he explained. “You told me to ignore any histrionics.”
“I don't have a clue what you're talking about,” Annie replied.
“The transplant method is unstable,” he continued. “It's painful, too. Fortunately, I've managed to perfect everything. I'm confident that I can trap the entity's mind in one of the brains, and seal him off in there forever. You and the voice in your head just need to finish your part of the deal first.”
“Our part of the deal?”
“The radio telescope's set,” he explained. “The entity has noticed the cults rushing here, so he's coming as well. He's gathering like a storm, and eventually he'll enter the radio telescope and travel like a signal into what he expects will be young Katia's body. Instead, he'll find himself in a brain, and then we'll shut everything off.”
“A radio telescope?” Annie said, before hurrying to the window and looking out. “What -”
Before she could finish, she realized she could just about make out another, large building on the horizon, silhouetted against the night sky. This building featured what looked like a large dish on its roof.
“And I still want what's coming to me once this is over,” Schlesinger said. “I get to take all this technology and use it for good. Something pure has to come out of so much madness. The brain transplant equipment can be used to save the lives of millions of people every year. It might even be applicable to longevity projects. I get sole rights to all of that. Not for the money, you understand. I want to be able to steer the research so that it's not corrupted by money or by big business.”
“I'm waiting,” Nurse Winter's voice said weakly in Annie's head, as she continued to stare at the distant radio telescope. “The entity will be watching for a signal.”
Annie paused, before turning and looking back toward Schlesinger. Stepping a little closer, while keeping the letter-opener raised, she finally saw that he had one of the brains on a plastic board. Removed from its jar, the brain looked a much paler shade of gray than all the others, and Annie couldn't help but notice a mass of thin black wires trailing from the cortex extender and running all the way
down to the floor.
“I tried to inject her with pure adrenaline,” he added. “Even that didn't help.”
“What happened to her?” Annie asked.
“Number ninety-six,” Schlesinger announced. “I remember her. She was a patient here, her name was Hayley. Nice girl, very creative, but completely beyond help. She'd suffered from schizophrenia since an early age. In her case, the voices were all her own, clashing inside her mind. That's one of the reasons I thought she'd be useful for this study.” Reaching down, he touched one side of the brain with his bare hand. “She was always unusually weak following the extraction. I did what I could to keep her alive in the container, but ultimately she suffered from a deformation of the neural cortex. When I turned the lights on earlier, it was enough to finish her off.”
He ran his fingertips across the top of the brain, almost as if he was stroking the surface.
“I should have found a way to save her,” he murmured, “but at least I'll learn something from her death. Do you want to know the funniest thing? I still have her physical body, hooked up to a machine to keep it viable. How pathetic is that? I suppose I thought that maybe one day I'd restore her. Sometimes I even go into the room and spend time with her. She's so very beautiful, and sometimes I can't help myself, I...”
He stared at his hands for a moment.
“I kept her body alive,” he added, nodding toward the far end of the laboratory. “In the back of my mind, I was hoping to restore her somehow.”
Turning, Annie saw that a girl's body lay on a metal slab. For a moment, the sight was so horrific – so utterly awful – that she didn't even know how to react.